Seagate or WD?

S

Snakekilla

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 12, 2007
Messages
134
I've been looking at drives as i want an internal and external. From what I've seen they are priced very closely and Seagate have the better warranty. since you're looking for an external drive you might want to check out this staples deal on a 400GB WD for $50 after rebate.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=605939

some people say that drive is junk, blew up in a few months etc... has no power switch I read? but people also said WD has excellent customer service and will replace with a MyBook if it dies. I would buy it, run lots of tests on it before you really trust it with critical data.


What I think I'll be doing is picking up 2 500GB Seagates for about $110 each, and mount one in the external case of my choosing. One thing that sucks about the prebuilt externals is you cant open the enclosure without voiding the warranty on the whole thing. so if the controller board dies you have to send it in. if you have you own external case you could replace or mount internally to at least access your data.
 
Seagate, you can't beat thier warranty.
 
Ockie said:
Seagate, you can't beat thier warranty.
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Except that if you have to RMA a drive, you get a refurbished one back that is likely to die within 2 weeks anyway. If you buy a Seagate for the warranty, you are a fool.

My recommendation is a Samsung + a separate case. Samsung is quieter, draws less power, and, from what I hear, is easier to deal with if you do need to RMA stuff.
 
go WD, you don't need to worry about RMA very much because they are exteremly reliable, ive never had a problem with one to even have to deal with customer service

plus like mentioned before buy the drive and external enclosure instead, cheaper then you can upgrade the drive if need be
 
dandragonrage said:
Except that if you have to RMA a drive, you get a refurbished one back that is likely to die within 2 weeks anyway. If you buy a Seagate for the warranty, you are a fool.

My recommendation is a Samsung + a separate case. Samsung is quieter, draws less power, and, from what I hear, is easier to deal with if you do need to RMA stuff.
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Please tell me, what world are you from? :rolleyes:
 
Snakekilla said:
i'm looking for a good 300GB-500GB external hard drive..
price ranges $80-$125

i read on the reviews on WD Home external hdd., and there is a ton of bad reviews, compared to Seagates drives.. so which would you guys pick?

Seagate FreeAgent Desktop
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148234

Western Digital My Book
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822136025

i'd prefer the cheaper and better performance and less issues external hdd :) ..
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Seagate for external stuff,WD for internal drives.
 
This is like the PC vs. Mac debate:rolleyes:

But anyhow, I have never purchased a true external drive (always made my own with custom enclosures), but for internal drives I have to say Seagate first.

Yes they come at a premium price, but their RMA process is better than WDs in my experience and their drives tend to have lower failure rates in MY usage and experience.

Always good to look at newegg reviews and such though as sometimes certain models tend to fail more than others (you can kinda see a trend in reviews, but dont worry, there are always going to be a few DOA drives in a batch as its just life with HDDs).

Seagate has always been amazing to me, I have not had 1 of my main seagate drives fail yet while at the same time I have had about 5 WD drives kick the bucket. (I have had seagates fail in customers machines, but it tends to be less than WD).

Both are good though, and people tend to pick a favorite and swear by it.


And at the Samsung comment? They suck...stay away from Samsung drives....they tend to be short lived.
 
I use both on a daily basis and have never had to RMA either, but I personally like the styling of the mybook line. Both companies are great so go for whichever you like the looks of better :p.
 
dandragonrage said:
Earth. You?
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I think you are a little bit off course, because on earth, a person would make a proper comparison with a product based on experience, not based on "what I've heard" assumptions.

I've experienced first hand Seagate's RMA process to be the same of that of Western Digitals, I have also experienced that the failure rate for the used drives are amongst the same. To say that refurb Seagate drives die in 20 days is foolish and down right arrogant... to say that their RMA process is bad just on the RUMOR that you have hear, is naive.
 
I have issues with WD's refurb crap too. They both suck. And when I say I've heard, I don't mean I read on the forum. I mean from the friends of mine (not friends of friends of friends etc.) that USE Seagates out in the field.
 
Ockie said:
I think you are a little bit off course, because on earth, a person would make a proper comparison with a product based on experience, not based on "what I've heard" assumptions.

I've experienced first hand Seagate's RMA process to be the same of that of Western Digitals, I have also experienced that the failure rate for the used drives are amongst the same. To say that refurb Seagate drives die in 20 days is foolish and down right arrogant... to say that their RMA process is bad just on the RUMOR that you have hear, is naive.
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I just have to say that I went through 6 of Seagate's 500GB drives, bought two for 199 a piece on sale at Fry's when they were new and cool, and I RMA'd them twice each for a total of 6 drives, all of them failing and ticking and just totally useless and annoying and I was refused getting a refund and they wouldn't ensure that I got a *new* drive as opposed to a refurb.

I can't imagine my experience could have been any worse, so I went with my current drive, a WD 750 and it's like it doesn't even exist inside my case, quiet, fast, no issues at all.

I used to be a huge Seagate fan because of their warranty until I actually had to *use* the warranty.

The process was smooth and the shipping to and from was fast, but I might as well have just kept the dead drives and not had my hopes crushed not once, but four times total.
 
Optional87 said:
I just have to say that I went through 6 of Seagate's 500GB drives, bought two for 199 a piece on sale at Fry's when they were new and cool, and I RMA'd them twice each for a total of 6 drives, all of them failing and ticking and just totally useless and annoying and I was refused getting a refund and they wouldn't ensure that I got a *new* drive as opposed to a refurb.
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I like WD's myself, but if you bought the Seagate drives when they were a new model, then that partially explains the failures. Earlier this year, there were a couple of papers (one from google, don't recall who was behind the other) and they found that all drives have about the same level of reliability (including refurbs), with a few exceptions:

1. Some drive models are just bad.
2. Drives that are made in the first 3 months of the model tend to have higher failure rates.

The latter probably explains the rather unexpected failure of my WD5000KS (Checked it with WD's utilities a few days ago and it was in good health across the board
 
nilepez said:
I like WD's myself, but if you bought the Seagate drives when they were a new model, then that partially explains the failures. Earlier this year, there were a couple of papers (one from google, don't recall who was behind the other) and they found that all drives have about the same level of reliability (including refurbs), with a few exceptions:

1. Some drive models are just bad.
2. Drives that are made in the first 3 months of the model tend to have higher failure rates.

The latter probably explains the rather unexpected failure of my WD5000KS (Checked it with WD's utilities a few days ago and it was in good health across the board
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Oh I've seen the google drive report, but I can't imagine over the course of 6 months and 6 drives, Seagate couldn't at least give me one that wouldn't fail in less than 4 weeks.
 
Optional87 said:
all of them failing and ticking and just totally useless and annoying
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How many times did you replace the power supply? You could easily have killed half a dozen perfectly fine drives, with symptoms like that, if the answer is "none".
 
lol my external came with a sticker on it that says warranty void if removed. Thing is the sticker was already falling off 1/2 the drive when I got it. So it is stuck to one part of the case, but not to the other. I would just glue it back down and warranty anyways I guess.

My Raptor died after 2 months, no warranty from zip zoom fly. WD sent me back a refurbished raptor. This is back when they were expensive! I was pretty pissed, but thats all they would do. However some refurbished drives are probably less likely to fail than new ones, as all the wear parts are typicaly replaced. Still I will probably go seagate when the 1Tb drives become affordable, just a change of pace. I had a $400 4Gb Seagate drive die on me back in the day before I switched to WD.

Now then, I think all HD manufacturers have problems. But I would personaly stick to seagate or WD, although I have had failures of both kinds when new drives were released.
 
unhappy_mage said:
How many times did you replace the power supply? You could easily have killed half a dozen perfectly fine drives, with symptoms like that, if the answer is "none".
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My PC Power and Cooling 510? Yeah, that thing wasn't the problem.
 
yea i am looking for a external that would never die.. really..or atleast last for a good number of years with good/great care.. which i normally do with all my pc stuff.. which is better lasting? WD or Seagate.. i got both internal and they both last for about a year, no problems what so ever.. but external i hear is alot more harder to keep alive for some reason.. anyone know why? should i just take a risk and just open up my pc and add another internal drive?
 
It is a close tie between the two. I am a Systems Administrator and the majority of the drives we use internal or external are Seagate. I also very much like the WD but still Seagate wins out for us in reliability and performance. Just whatever you do don't buy Maxtor. I know that Seagate owns them but for the love of God they are the pits.
 
Optional87 said:
My PC Power and Cooling 510? Yeah, that thing wasn't the problem.
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Everyone makes lemons. Everyone.
Snakekilla said:
yea i am looking for a external that would never die.. really..or atleast last for a good number of years with good/great care..
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You'll be looking a while for a "never die" disk. Take care of it, though, and most likely anything will last you several years. There are bad batches - DiamondMax 8 low-profile drives, IBM 75GXPs, and so forth - but those are pretty much the luck of the draw.
hardnewbie said:
Just whatever you do don't buy Maxtor. I know that Seagate owns them but for the love of God they are the pits.
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Did you know that many "Maxtor" drives are now actually rebranded drives that Seagate really made? For example, this - Maxtor never made a 320GB drive.
 
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